Back to Black

The Halloween costume party is in full swing when we arrive at the cloistered brick building. Muted music escapes the walls, and dim silhouettes flicker across the Mezzanine windows.

I hold the door for Marion, who adjusts her mask and ascends the stairs. I can't help but admire the curve of her neckline as she slips past me in her bare-back black dress. The host, clad as a vampire in a shiny black cloak, squints inquisitively at us. Can he recognize us behind our masks? He gestures for us to get in, stealing an irreverent look at Marion's sculpted figure. I don't blame him. She is beautiful.

Eyes turn in our direction as we enter the softly lit ballroom. We probably stand out from the regulars of this place. She looks stunning in her elegant black evening dress. I do my best to match her exquisiteness by wearing my smartest tux.

Our faces are covered by mirrored domino masks, a black one with purple for me, a purple one with black for her, both ornate, sophisticated, asymmetrically matching, with snaking silver patterns. Baroque, Marion had called them, showing them to me as she switched to my car at one of our usual clandestine parking lots earlier. The masks complete our intended "masquerade" look, but also ensure that tonight we are nameless. It is a novelty, being together and yet free from the intrusion of prying eyes.

The Halloween decor is festively decadent. Electric tea candles gleam in soft yellow from posh coffee tables draped in black and orange scattered around the perimeter of the dance floor. Giant cobwebs made of rope hang from the corners, each featuring a different kind of hairy arachnid. A skeleton suspended on chains by its wrists hangs on the opposite wall. Costumed couples float along the dance floor in blissful oblivion. The orchestra plays Di Sarli.

"Fun!" Marion whispers in my ear as she turns around, her green eyes glistening. I love it when her eyes glisten. I cherish every chance to get lost in their translucent magic. I take her hand and lead her to the dance floor.

This is it. This is where I want to be at the end of my solitary, tedious week, spent sifting through pages of intelligence data. Here, on this inviting dance floor, surrounded by elegant couples, each entranced in their own world, with Marion in my arms, soft, responsive and mine.

She had not always been mine. It took three years for her to yield to my dogged, persistent courtship. She fought it, undulating between attraction and recoil, passion and ambivalence, desire and innate mistrust of the concept of me, a single unattached recluse with undisclosed past who could be simultaneously a lodestone and a deathtrap. Three years of surreptitious meetings in secluded parking lots, crummy bars and crowded dance floors, a thrilling, conflicted, guilt-ridden escape from her comfortable but loveless marriage. As for me, three years ago I saw her standing expectantly against the wall in a crowded ballroom, beautiful, fragile, aching to be asked to a dance, and I knew to the core of my being that I would never be able to let go of the longing to hold her in my arms.

The bandoneon and violin engage in an intricate conversation of love and lament. We glide along the dance floor. Our first tanda, a set of three similarly themed songs which we dance together before moving on to dance with other guests, is ours and our alone, an unspoken acknowledgement of belonging to each other. Marion yields to my lead in attentive surrender. The warmth of her body feels like home.

When the tanda ends, the orchestra decides to take a break. The musicians take a bow and head for the bar at the far end. A DJ with a Mac Book plugs into the amplifier in the corner and takes over the music. Under the anonymous cover of her mask, Marion stands on her toes and kisses me, her lips lingering tenderly on mine.